The Pretender
February 25th, 2009, 05:08
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/16967437+cr1+re0+ar1/audi-r8-race-taxi-.jpg
Pour Into Faster Audi R8 V-10. Add Twist of Le Mans. Stir.
The V-10 is into the meat of its powerband now, fusing my helmet to the headrest as it blazes to its 8700-rpm redline, the race-tuned R8 feasting hungrily on straightaway, the engine’s searing exhaust note ricocheting off the carbon-fiber dash like a machine gun firing in a window factory. Ahead -- not very far ahead at all -- a sharp left turn looms. Normally, I would do something about now, but my legs don’t move. Nor do my hands. In fact, they’re in my lap, as they have been for the past minute or so. Zero point five second to impact.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/14826581+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx.jpg
Jacky Ickx brakes calmly, smoothly, cracks off a quick downshift, and in a blink we’re powering through the turn’s apex and onto the back straightaway. Yes, I said “Jacky Ickx.” Six-time winner of Le Mans. Winner of eight Formula 1 races, former Ferrari F1 factory driver, and twice runner-up in the World Driving Championship. Victor in the 1983 Paris-Dakar rally, too. This is not a dream. I am wide awake, with nothing to do. Jacky Ickx is at the wheel.
If you read my Monday blog on my drive in the new, V-10-powered Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro, you know that my getting a morning’s worth of track laps in the car required roughly 32 hours of travel, four airplanes, eight in-flight movies, six in-flight meals, and a mad connection dash through Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris before arriving at a beachside hotel in Marbella, Spain, whose beach I never saw. I drove the car, ate dinner, then flew all the way back to L.A. The trip was so quick, by the time I returned home I’m pretty sure I’d actually grown younger.
I’m not complaining, mind you. This was not some dinky SEAT Altea waiting for me in Spain -- this was the new, more-potent version of the Audi R8, winner of our 2008 Best Handling Car test and one of my very favorite supercars. All right, then: After takeoff, I’ll have the “braised peppercorn beef tenderloin au jus” (meatloaf) and, to start, the “duck liver paté with dijon mustard and cornichons” (Spam).
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/14826590+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx-with-audi-r8-race-taxi.jpg
Unbeknownst to me as I left, a second treat awaited at Spain’s private Ascari race circuit. Audi had brought along Jacky Ickx himself to give demo laps in a specially prepared R8 “race taxi.” Although based on a standard R8 5.2 and powered by an unmodified V-10 engine, the car had been modded with a racing exhaust, ceramic brakes, racing suspension, Dunlop racing slicks, roll cage, carbon-fiber interior bits, and a carbon-fiber rear diffuser and rear wing. Total weight savings over the street-legal car: about 220 pounds.
“Hello, Ar-tur, it is a pleasure,” says Ickx with his famous Belgian accent as I belt into the passenger seat’s six-point racing harness. Ickx, now 64, is retired from professional racing, but as I’m about to find out, he hasn’t lost his touch. After I shake his Nomex-gloved hand, Ickx fires-up the V-10 and eases the R8 toward the pit exit.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/17804592+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx-in-audi-r8-race-taxi.jpg
Then he stands on it. A series of orange cones marks an impromptu chicane at pit out, but Ickx accelerates through them with a quick left-right swing, then mashes down hard on the gas for a brief downhill dip into Turn One. A squeeze of the brakes, balanced throttle as Ickx turns-in, then hard on the power again as we clip a late apex and tear onto the first long straight.
The view out the windshield may be a maelstrom of blurred tarmac and grass and trees, but inside the cockpit Ickx is a model of Zen. He holds the wheel in his fingertips, arcs it smoothly into corners, feeds on gas and brake with squeezes, not stomps. Never does the R8 lurch or slip -- nor, at the same time, does it ever hesitate or linger. Ickx is on it, going for it, but as cool and confident as a trapeze artist swinging and somersaulting from bar to bar. I’m pretty certain I detect a grin, too.
Unfettered by a street-legal exhaust, and with less mass to move, the V-10 in the special R8 blares more eloquently and more forcefully than the street car’s. Where I had been reaching 124 mph, Ickx is doing 130 (okay, fine -- perhaps the added speed isn’t all due to Ickx’s faster steed). We flash through an artificial kink of cones flat-out, then plaster ourselves against the belts as Ickx erases 110 mph quicker than I can say “hematoma.” A vigorous left-right-left through another chicane (my helmet actually smacks the door jamb) and Ickx is matting the go-pedal again and hurling us over what feels like a sweeping asphalt cliff.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/17804598+cr1+re0+ar1/ickx-and-st-antoine.jpg
Another minute or so of High G, then Ickx swings the R8 into the pits. “No, I did no development work on the R8,” says Ickx with a smile as we chat briefly in the cockpit. “But Audi had me drive the car when it was finished, and I said, well, ‘You did a very good job!’ The R8 is so easy to drive, very good with the steering. The V-10 engine, also, is like a race engine. It revs so well and so high. A beautiful car. I enjoy myself today.”
I shake hands again with the Master of Le Mans, thank him for a memorable ride, then clamber clumsily out of the chasm-like sport seat to make way for Ickx’s next “fare.”
Soon Jacky Ickx is gunning his R8 out of the pits once more. A moment later, amid the echo of angry twin exhausts, Audi’s race taxi vanishes over the first brow. And this time I can only stand there, meter still running.
Source: Motor Trend Blog, Posted February 19 2009 08:15 AM by Arthur St. Antoine.
Jarod.
Pour Into Faster Audi R8 V-10. Add Twist of Le Mans. Stir.
The V-10 is into the meat of its powerband now, fusing my helmet to the headrest as it blazes to its 8700-rpm redline, the race-tuned R8 feasting hungrily on straightaway, the engine’s searing exhaust note ricocheting off the carbon-fiber dash like a machine gun firing in a window factory. Ahead -- not very far ahead at all -- a sharp left turn looms. Normally, I would do something about now, but my legs don’t move. Nor do my hands. In fact, they’re in my lap, as they have been for the past minute or so. Zero point five second to impact.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/14826581+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx.jpg
Jacky Ickx brakes calmly, smoothly, cracks off a quick downshift, and in a blink we’re powering through the turn’s apex and onto the back straightaway. Yes, I said “Jacky Ickx.” Six-time winner of Le Mans. Winner of eight Formula 1 races, former Ferrari F1 factory driver, and twice runner-up in the World Driving Championship. Victor in the 1983 Paris-Dakar rally, too. This is not a dream. I am wide awake, with nothing to do. Jacky Ickx is at the wheel.
If you read my Monday blog on my drive in the new, V-10-powered Audi R8 5.2 FSI quattro, you know that my getting a morning’s worth of track laps in the car required roughly 32 hours of travel, four airplanes, eight in-flight movies, six in-flight meals, and a mad connection dash through Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris before arriving at a beachside hotel in Marbella, Spain, whose beach I never saw. I drove the car, ate dinner, then flew all the way back to L.A. The trip was so quick, by the time I returned home I’m pretty sure I’d actually grown younger.
I’m not complaining, mind you. This was not some dinky SEAT Altea waiting for me in Spain -- this was the new, more-potent version of the Audi R8, winner of our 2008 Best Handling Car test and one of my very favorite supercars. All right, then: After takeoff, I’ll have the “braised peppercorn beef tenderloin au jus” (meatloaf) and, to start, the “duck liver paté with dijon mustard and cornichons” (Spam).
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/14826590+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx-with-audi-r8-race-taxi.jpg
Unbeknownst to me as I left, a second treat awaited at Spain’s private Ascari race circuit. Audi had brought along Jacky Ickx himself to give demo laps in a specially prepared R8 “race taxi.” Although based on a standard R8 5.2 and powered by an unmodified V-10 engine, the car had been modded with a racing exhaust, ceramic brakes, racing suspension, Dunlop racing slicks, roll cage, carbon-fiber interior bits, and a carbon-fiber rear diffuser and rear wing. Total weight savings over the street-legal car: about 220 pounds.
“Hello, Ar-tur, it is a pleasure,” says Ickx with his famous Belgian accent as I belt into the passenger seat’s six-point racing harness. Ickx, now 64, is retired from professional racing, but as I’m about to find out, he hasn’t lost his touch. After I shake his Nomex-gloved hand, Ickx fires-up the V-10 and eases the R8 toward the pit exit.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/17804592+cr1+re0+ar1/jacky-ickx-in-audi-r8-race-taxi.jpg
Then he stands on it. A series of orange cones marks an impromptu chicane at pit out, but Ickx accelerates through them with a quick left-right swing, then mashes down hard on the gas for a brief downhill dip into Turn One. A squeeze of the brakes, balanced throttle as Ickx turns-in, then hard on the power again as we clip a late apex and tear onto the first long straight.
The view out the windshield may be a maelstrom of blurred tarmac and grass and trees, but inside the cockpit Ickx is a model of Zen. He holds the wheel in his fingertips, arcs it smoothly into corners, feeds on gas and brake with squeezes, not stomps. Never does the R8 lurch or slip -- nor, at the same time, does it ever hesitate or linger. Ickx is on it, going for it, but as cool and confident as a trapeze artist swinging and somersaulting from bar to bar. I’m pretty certain I detect a grin, too.
Unfettered by a street-legal exhaust, and with less mass to move, the V-10 in the special R8 blares more eloquently and more forcefully than the street car’s. Where I had been reaching 124 mph, Ickx is doing 130 (okay, fine -- perhaps the added speed isn’t all due to Ickx’s faster steed). We flash through an artificial kink of cones flat-out, then plaster ourselves against the belts as Ickx erases 110 mph quicker than I can say “hematoma.” A vigorous left-right-left through another chicane (my helmet actually smacks the door jamb) and Ickx is matting the go-pedal again and hurling us over what feels like a sweeping asphalt cliff.
http://image.motortrend.com/f/editorial/pour-into-faster-audi-r8-v-10-add-twist-of-le-mans-stir/17804598+cr1+re0+ar1/ickx-and-st-antoine.jpg
Another minute or so of High G, then Ickx swings the R8 into the pits. “No, I did no development work on the R8,” says Ickx with a smile as we chat briefly in the cockpit. “But Audi had me drive the car when it was finished, and I said, well, ‘You did a very good job!’ The R8 is so easy to drive, very good with the steering. The V-10 engine, also, is like a race engine. It revs so well and so high. A beautiful car. I enjoy myself today.”
I shake hands again with the Master of Le Mans, thank him for a memorable ride, then clamber clumsily out of the chasm-like sport seat to make way for Ickx’s next “fare.”
Soon Jacky Ickx is gunning his R8 out of the pits once more. A moment later, amid the echo of angry twin exhausts, Audi’s race taxi vanishes over the first brow. And this time I can only stand there, meter still running.
Source: Motor Trend Blog, Posted February 19 2009 08:15 AM by Arthur St. Antoine.
Jarod.